Author: William Bibbiani

In recent years, horror veteran Mick Garris (The Stand, Critters 2: The Main Course) has been enjoying a career renaissance thanks a series of TV show ideas that we all wish we’d thought of first. “Masters of Horror” was a hit (and occasionally miss) anthology series which gave horror directors free reign, sometimes for the first time in their careers, to make whatever film they wanted without censorship (except for Takashi Miike, whose episode “Imprint” proved too hardcore even for Showtime). Now he’s at it again with a new series, “Post Mortem with Mick Garris,” in which he interviews horror legends on FEARnet.

The first episode, featuring an interview with make-up legend Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London, Planet of the Apes, The Wolfman), aired February 8th. Mick Garris was kind enough to sit down and answer some questions himself with Geekscape interviewer William Bibbiani… from many miles away and at the comfort of his own desk.

Mick, thank you for answering our questions. Any horror fan worth their salt is familiar with your work and will certainly be interested in watching your new show, “Post Mortem.” I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss this new program and, if I may, ask some questions about your own work in the genre.

You’ve said before that the idea for “Masters of Horror,” your anthology series starring famous horror directors as opposed to actors, per se, came about when you and many of the directors who contributed to the series were all eating dinner together. How did “Post Mortem” come about? Were you just talking to Rick Baker and said, “Hey, we should be filming this?“

A better story than the real thing, I guess.  It really came from when we were doing MASTERS, and I thought it would be an interesting way to get into the minds of the filmmakers who were working on the show.  I felt there was a fan appetite for seeing how the greatest filmmakers in the horror genre worked individually.  Many years ago, I did a show called FANTASY FILM FESTIVAL for LA’s first pay TV channel, the Z Channel.  This was before I was a working screenwriter or director, and I learned a lot from those interviews.  I was between productions, waiting to find out what I’d be directing next, and thought it would be fun for me and the fans.

What format is the show going to take? Is the series going to feature lengthy, “Inside the Actor’s Studio” dissections of the guests’ work or will the emphasis be on more recent projects?

Kind of both.  We interview the guests for over an hour, rather than little talk-show promotional soundbites flogging the new project.  We start with their beginnings, but each of the interviews takes on a life of its own.  They’re conversations about a genre we love and work in.  I go in with a list of questions that I never end up looking at, and the talks kind of find their own direction.

From the outside looking in, it would appear that you know just about everyone who is anyone in the horror industry. Is there anyone who you would consider a dream “get” on “Post Mortem?” Is there any individual in particular you still geek out about meeting?

Well, there are surely some people I’d love to have on that probably won’t work out.  I don’t think King’s or Spielberg’s or Romero’s schedules will allow.  And there are a lot of international filmmakers worth speaking with who aren’t in LA (or, for that matter, don’t speak English).  But the main ones I’d love to get are all, well, dead.  Imagine a chat with James Whale, or Jack Pierce, or Boris Karloff.

Were there any directors for “Masters of Horror,” “Fear Itself” or “Masters of Science” that you wanted but could not schedule? I remember hearing at a San Diego Comic Con panel that Lucky McKee replaced Roger Corman on the first series. What can you tell us about the tricky process of “casting” star directors, in both your anthology series and “Post Mortem?”

We came close to getting Romero and Corman, but they just didn’t work into the schedule.  Same with Wes Craven.  Scheduling is the single most complicated element, both in MASTERS OF HORROR and, we’re finding out, with POST MORTEM.  We’ve had several times where guests were set on POST MORTEM where they had to cancel due to illness, or to reschedule.  Clive Barker was one of them, and I was really looking forward to speaking with him about the many facets of his career.  When, on MASTERS, the train starts to roll, you have to schedule each ten-day shoot back-to-back.  There’s no stopping and waiting for somebody’s calendar to clear.  Each little change throws everything into chaos.  It’s amazing we achieved what we did.

Segueing awkwardly into your own work, many horror fans associate your work with Stephen King (EDITOR’S NOTE: For the uninitiated, Garris directed the TV movie of The Stand, the TV movie of The Shining, the TV movie Desperation, all based on King’s work, and the feature film Sleepwalkers, which was from an original Stephen King screenplay). What’s your working relationship with, as my ex- roommate liked to call him, “Uncle Stevie?” We know he trusted you with a faithful adaptation of The Shining, which is kind of a big deal since he wasn’t a fan of Kubrick’s original…

He’s a great friend, though since we live on opposite coasts, I don’t see him that often.  But he’s a lot of fun to have on a set, and just the most terrific and enthusiastic collaborator a filmmaker could ever have.  When he trusts you, he trusts you completely.  I’ve never had him tell me how he thought I should shoot a scene… but he’s always there with ideas and inspiration.  Most of the work we’ve done together is not only from his books, but from his own screenplay adaptations, so we start with great material and blueprints.  That gives us a great edge.

Fifteen years gone, The Stand is still considered one of the best, and certainly most memorable, TV mini-series in decades. Possibly ever. When you look back on the series, is there anything you would have done differently, or any moments you’re particularly proud of?

There’s a lot I would have done differently on every project I’ve ever done.  Hopefully you continue to grow in your chosen profession.  There isn’t a production I’ve been on that I haven’t learned something from.  But I’m really happy with so many of the performances, the dramatic elements of the film.  The visual effects were always too cheap for their own good, but they’re particularly embarrassing now, in light of how far digital effects have come.  But for me, Part One and Part Four are the most potent.

Segueing hopefully a little less awkwardly into some of your earlier work, another writer/director who is well-known for his Stephen King adaptation is Frank Darabont, and you both worked on the screenplay for The Fly 2. David Cronenberg’s film was a tough gig to follow, and although The Fly 2 may not have been as well-received, it had no shortage of interesting ideas. What was your approach to writing the sequel, and were there any interesting takes on the material that never got out of the larval stage?

Well, I was the first writer to tackle the script, on Cronenberg’s recommendation.  My original concept was more in line with the feeling of Cronenberg’s film.  It dealt with concepts of birth and abortion, an evolutionary next step in the “special” child of Veronica Scaife and Seth Brundle.  Religious fanaticism played a part, and there was a lot going on.  But at the time, Leonard Goldberg was running the studio, and Scott Rudin was our production executive.  They had contrasting views of how the movie should be done, and I was right in the middle.  They wanted to make a teenage horror movie, which was not how I wanted to go.  There were a couple of drafts of the script before I was lucky enough to be offered my first feature to direct, the Story That Needed To Be Told, CRITTERS 2.

I may or may not be alone on this, but my favorite film of yours is easily Critters 2: The Main Course, which is one of those rare sequels that in my opinion outdoes the original. And again, it’s full of interesting ideas and memorable moments, like the shapeshifting staple gag or the Krite latching onto the Easter Bunny’s crotch. How did you get the gig, and what was the writing process like with David Twohy? Was the Easter Bunny scene autobiographical, for example?

I never worked with David; he did the original draft of the script, and I met him a couple times during the process, but we never worked together.  I was hired off of my work on AMAZING STORIES, as both writer and director.  Once they brought me on board, they wanted me to write from then on, from some of their ideas as well as some of my own.  No, I never lost my gonads to hungry critters, dang it, but it made for a great scene.  I really had a blast making that movie.  It was filled with humor as well as horror, and took the time to create some interesting characters.

The other sequels were actually pretty good, particularly Critters 4, which unlike most horror sequels actually had a reason to go to space. (I’m looking at you, Leprechaun franchise…) Did you watch the films in the Critters series that followed yours? What was your take on them?

I saw them because they were written by David J. Schow, who has been a close friend for years.  I liked them; there’s something really scrappy and imaginative about these inexpensive little beasties that I find endearing.  There is a reach that might exceed their grasp, but everybody gave their all on those films.

And finally, what’s Mick Garris the “Horror Geek” like? What are your personal tastes in viewing material, as opposed to films you gravitate towards directing? What recent horror movies really excited you, and what new directors are you most interesting in seeing evolve?

I just like a good story, or seeing something I haven’t seen before.  A lot of the Masters still do fantastic work, and I love keeping abreast of it.  But there’s great stuff from other countries that I find impressive.  I’m not big on franchises, sequels and remakes and the like, but remember, Cronenberg’s THE FLY and Carpenter’s THE THING were masterful remakes that stand on their own merits.  But I loved LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, PAN’S LABYRINTH, SHIVER, MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, lots of stuff out there.  I’m not big on gore for gore’s sake, but I like when it’s used boldly and inventively when the story calls for it.  But give me a good story, interesting characters, and surprise me; take me somewhere I’ve never been and scare the shit out of me and I’m happy as a pig in shit.

Thank you for your time! Geekscape looks forward to the new show and wishes you all the best.

And thanks to you.  Hope you enjoy it.

Halloween weekend marks the theatrical release of House of the Devil, a sincere – and sincerely creepy – horror film from up-and-coming writer/director Ti West. West has several indie films under his belt already, but is probably most famous for directing Cabin Fever 2… which hasn’t even been released yet. That’s how up-and-coming he is! We’ll have our review up tomorrow (here’s a preview: See it in theaters, because it’s great), but for now here’s Ti West with his stars Jocelin Donahue (He’s Just Not That Into You) and AJ Bowen (The Signal) talking to Geekscape about making an 1980’s horror movie in the 21st century… without the irony.

So where did you come up with this rather brilliant idea?

Ti West: I always had a fascination with Satanic Cults, and the 80’s “Satanic Panic,” and this weird cultural phenomenon that happened in the United States. I just remember growing up and there were always places like, “At the end of that road there is a Satanic Church, and you have to go to the back of the woods to find it. And someone in the town had seen it, but not everybody.”

And this was a real story?

Ti West: Yes it was… In Pennsylvania it’s called “Satan Road,” where all the trees bend away from the road? And there were babies apparently sacrificed there, and at the back of the woods a Satanic Church: Not actually true, because I’ve been there. Trees actually do bend away, but it’s because of the sun. But at the end of the road somebody spraypainted pentagrams. So that kind of stuff was always really fascinating to me, and the cultural hysteria that got perpetuated by people like Geraldo… it’s always been something that’s been in my head. So I knew I was going to get money to make this horror movie, and I knew I wanted to make a satanic movie, and it just made sense to do that in the 80’s during that time period. And then I also wanted to do a movie about when you get out of college and you’re broke. I lived in New York City and was broke and living on rice and people’s floors. It’s funny, because now there’s this weird, like, “recession-friendliness” to the movie but I wrote the movie so long ago when everyone was doing great, but I was like superbroke. So just kind of combining those two ideas, personally, for me, was interesting.

Did being superbroke influence the style of the film, in terms of minimalism?

Ti West: I think the producers being superbroke had to do with that. (Laughter.) I mean, it was always supposed to be kind of a low-budgety movie, so when I wrote it, it was like, “Oh, the movie takes place in a house, it’ll be about a babysitter.” There might have been a location or two that got cut out to make it a little more [cost-efficient]… The other thing about the movie is I really wanted to make a movie about when you’re in somebody else’s house, left by yourself, and the weird things you find yourself [doing], snooping through the drawers, going “Why am I doing this?” But you for some reason can’t help but do it. That sort of stuff and those weird private moments in a non-familiar environment was really interesting to me.

A lot of 80’s staples, like the titles and dance montage, are on display in House of the Devil. Were you particularly fond of these tropes?

Ti West: Yeah… A lot of people say it’s homage-y, and I don’t think of it as homage-y as much as a period piece, and I wanted to be as accurate as possible. Just like if we made a 50’s movie, I would have tried to make it accurate to the 50’s, but always in the script there was always going to be a dance scene. It was always going to be that song. [“One Thing Leads to Another” by The Fixxx.] If we couldn’t afford it, it would have been “Send Me an Angel,” but we were able to get it. And then I always knew we were going to do a freeze frame opening title thing. I think that element, like I said, I don’t think of the movie as homage, but I can’t be so ignorant not say there are a few “elbow in the rib” moments, that being one of them.

William Bibbiani: Did you have to fight to keep the movie from becoming ironic? A lot of movies that are set in the 80’s, are “Oh, look at the clothes…” and this is just, “Oh, it [just happens to be set in] the 80’s.”

Ti West: No, I’m sort of obsessive-compulsive with details, so I wanted to be really authentic and really specific, and if it had become a tongue-in-cheek thing it would have been a disaster. I remember talking to Jade Healy, the production designer, who was really responsible for a lot of how great the movie looks, and telling her it was not “Video Killed the Radio Star” 80’s, it’s going to be “brown, wood-paneling feathered hair” 80’s. And we went through yearbook photos of people and polaroids of people and things like that, and it was always, like, sweatshirts and buttoned-up plaid shirts and things like that. I really wanted it to be as realistic and authentic as possible, and not in your face.

Jocelin, when you were on set, dealing with dark forces, did you have any concerns about your personal safety? Did you have any protective talismans?

Jocelin Donahue: No, you have to kind of try to stay in the moment but there’s like 40 people from the crew around you and you’re supposed to be alone in the house. [EDITOR’S NOTE: At this point, the recording turns to static for several key seconds, clearly as a result of this question.] …Thank God, we shot sequentially, so as the night goes on the stakes get higher and higher, so you kind of feel that things are starting to go awry. You try to keep it natural, but we did have some weird things happen at the hotel and at the holding area.

Ti West: Also, when we were doing one of the pentagram scenes the tree next to the house got struck by lightning. (Laughter.)

Jocelin Donahue: Next time I’ll bring a talisman, I guess.

How did AJ Bowen and Jocelin Donahue become involved, and what about the script attracted you to it?

Jocelin Donahue: Well, I just came through the normal casting avenues. I knew the casting director, and Ti and I met maybe six times before I actually got the part, just talking about what it was going to be like, the styles, the themes, and what the shoot would be like. Since it’s an indie film it was really intense, we were shooting every night for about fourteen hours a night. And I was just attracted to the character and the normalcy. I felt that she was someone people could relate to. I definitely felt like she was someone that I related to. I had been to school and tried to get away from my roommate and find an apartment and all those everyday kind of things. The naturalism that his filmmaking really succeeds at is something that I like in filmmaking. I like the fly on the wall aspect of a lot of the film, and I also got to do the crazy, violent, psychedelic bloody stuff too, so for me it was really fun to get to do a range of things.

AJ Bowen: I’d had a movie out a year before, and Ti and I had sort of become friendly because we were with the same people traveling with the film festivals. He had Triggerman, I had Signal. And we went out to a bar in L.A. one night, and we were with one of the directors of Signal, and he kind of just got pushed out of the way because Ti and I had started talking about Iron Eagle and Teen Wolf. We kind of fell in love. (Laughs.) And then a little later, he was like, “You know, I have a script for you. It’s this part, I was going to do it, I don’t know if I’m going to do it. It’s like this mean guy. It’s not that cool. But if you want to do it maybe we can get you on camera and see…”

Was that Iron Eagle 1, 2, 3 or 4 you were discussing?

AJ Bowen: There’s only one real Iron Eagle.

You’ve got some iconic names in the cast – Tom Noonan (Manhunter), Mary Woronov (Eating Raoul), Dee Wallace (Cujo) – can you talk about casting them and working with them?

Ti West: Well, Tom I had worked with before on my first film, The Roost, and we had got along very well. Tom actually called me. I was casting only Jocelin’s role at the time. I got a call from Tom saying, “Hey, I heard that you got this script. I think I’d be good for it.” And I was like, “All right. Perfect… You’d be great.” So the fact that he wanted to do it and I wanted to work with him again, and I think he’s really terrific in the movie. He has just the right element of creepiness but he’s not so scary that you would run away from him. He’s just kind of awkward. So that was that.

And then Mary was someone I had been obsessed with for a really long time. I’ve been a huge fan. She doesn’t really act anymore. She’s a painter and a writer, and that’s what she’s been focusing on. And when I did [Cabin Fever 2] I really wanted her to be in that, and I had so many arguments with her agent! “She’s not going to do it!” We just kept fighting and fighting and I ran out of time, and I ended up not getting to use her. So on this movie I called the agent back and she’s just like, “Ugh, you again? Look, here’s Mary’s phone number. Good luck.” So I called her and she invited me over to her house and we hung out and we totally hit it off. We hung out for like three hours, and she was like, “I’d love to do this. I would have loved to do that other movie, had I met you!” And I was like, “ARGH!” You know, it was really great. I got to kind of put her on screen again. I think she has a screen presence kind of not like anyone else’s, and it’s pretty amazing. It’s great because I was a fan and I got to not just meet her as a fan, I got to work with her professionally. And that’s the best thing you can do.

And Dee was a situation where I had always wanted to work with Dee, and I never really had a role for her, and I didn’t really have a role for her in this one either, and we were casting the landlady role and it was kind of “Eh.” I looked up Dee and she was going to be in Baltimore doing a convention, and so I was like, “If she just came here a day earlier, she could do this scene. And she may not want to do it, but let’s call her and see.” And so I called her and said, “Look, I really want you to play this role.” I’d met her once. “And I was like, look, you’re already coming here anyway. So come here one day earlier and we’ll make sure you get to Connecticut and then to Baltimore.” And she was down to do it, and that was great. And she showed up, and we hit it off. It was also good to put Dee in a movie playing… She’s in a horror movie, but she’s not playing anything that has to do with the horror. Because Dee’s been in so many horror movies, I was like, “Look, you don’t have to scream! You don’t have to have blood on you, you’re not killing anyone. You’re not diagnosing anyone with some sort of problem. You’re just going to be a real person.” So that was satisfying because, working with actors it’s fun making horror movies and all that, but it’s far more interesting making the non-horror stuff in the movie with actors, because you don’t want to have actors you really like and then go, “All right, we’re going to squirt blood on you!” That’s not as interesting as doing really dramatic scenes.

And the Jocelin and AJ?

Jocelin Donahue: I mean, what a priviledge to be working with them in my first lead role! [EDITOR’S NOTE: Once again, the demons got into the microphone and prevented poor Jocelin from being recorded for a brief period.] …They also have a great sense of humor, so it was just fun on the set. And yeah I really like the scene where Tom’s convincing me to stay, because he’s gentle and he’s creepy, so she doesn’t seem like a fool for staying. And Mary was just crazy, and cool, and it was just fun.

AJ Bowen: They were kind of like opposites. You know, I didn’t have a lot of down time on the movie, and typically when I was there to do something it was just to hurt a female. (Laughter.) I felt guilty about it.  I was really excited because I was off the first night that Tom was coming on set to check things out, so I went down to the transport van to meet up with him… Tom comes out and sits down in the front seat. I give him shotgun, I thought that was gracious. (Laughter.) And I was like, “Hey, Tom! I’m Aj. It’s really nice to meet you,” and he just looked at me, and straight stonewalled me. (Laughter.) Then he turned and looked away. And then four days later when we were in an interview he finally started talking, but up until that point… By the end, he was like, “Hey AJ, do you have any music on your laptop that I could listen to?” “What are you into, Tom?” “I really like, uh, Motown? And uh, also Huey Lewis and the News: Sports.”

And Mary was the opposite. She was really gregarious. I’ve heard some people get kind of freaked out by her because of how gregarious she is. She’s just super-laid back. She was telling dirty jokes about 10-15 minutes in. It was kind of like hanging out with my Mom. It was really educational for me, both to the watch the other actors but also to watch the way the set was operating because I got to have all this time where I could just smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, and generally be creepy. And when I’m not doing that just sort of watch how they do things, because everybody, all the actors have such a different approach to the way they were executing things. Mary would say she was kind of camp, Tom would say that he does, “I play Tom Noonan in every movie,” and Greta’s got her own thing going on, Jocelin’s got her own thing going on. It was just awesome to kind of watch them do what they do and then kind of hurt the women.

William Bibbiani: Were there any particularly good dirty jokes that Mary told?

Ti West: Tom has a lot. Tom had a never-ending supply of just one-liner old jokes. I can’t remember them. I was in New York with him yesterday, and I couldn’t remember any. Maybe one will come to me… All of a sudden you’d hear in the room, “BECAUSE IT’S A DICK IN YOUR MOUTH!” (Laughter.)

When asked about their beliefs on Satanism…

AJ Bowen: I’ve been waiting my whole life to buy the Satanic Bible, because I knew I was going to go on a “Watch” list the second I bought it, and I figured I already was on one. So when I found out we were doing this, I was like, “Hell yes, I’m going to Amazon.com and I’m going to purchase the Satanic Bible.” So I bought it, and I read it cover to cover, and it really bummed me out because it’s just like reading The Fountainhead. It’s just all about humanism, and I want to talk about summoning a succubus!

Ti West: It’s all about hanging out and being kind of selfish.

AJ Bowen: Yeah. Dungeons & Dragons is way more exciting than the Satanic Bible.

When shooting the dance sequence, were you listening to “One Thing Leads to Another?”

Jocelin Donahue: Oh yeah. Yeah. I listened to that song. I probably couldn’t get it out of my head for six months after we shot it because I was learning the lyrics, which are almost incomprehensible. The song doesn’t really make too much sense. But that was my most fun scene on the set, because most of the time I’m like, bummed or anxious or scared, and that was really my chance to let loose.

AJ Bowen: I have a question for Jocelin. Did you choreograph your own dance sequence?

Jocelin Donahue: (Laughs) – It was freestyle, just in the moment!

Ti West: There were about four takes per room. I remember when we did that, I had this last minute fear, because we rehearsed a lot, talked about the movie a lot, but we were both too embarrassed to talk about that scene. So that was always the one that just never really came up. And then literally like, seconds before we did it, we were setting up the room, and I’m sitting there with Eliot (Rockett) the D.P. and I just had this, like, “Oh no, what if this is stupid?” I had this moment where I was like, “If this is stupid, this is going to be such a bummer.” And I was like, “I don’t know how I’m going to connect the two parts,” and he was just like, “Well, let’s see what just happens.” …And so we first shot when she comes through the door… and then the song starts playing and she came through, she did all her own dance moves, it happened. And when it was over everyone stood up and clapped, and it was like, “Oh, it’s going to be fine.”

When making a horror film, how do you obey the conventions while still putting your own spin on things?

Ti West: For me, I kind of think of it as a personal thing. I’m trying to selfishly accomplish my own interests. That being said, there’s a lot of this movie that I think takes classic horror movie clichés and kind of flips them around a little bit. Certainly pacing-wise, where you’re not used to someone going into a room and something horrific not happening. Like she goes into the room and you’re like, “Something’s going to ha… Oh, it doesn’t.” And you’re like, “Oh, it’s okay. Then something’s going to happen in this room!” And then it doesn’t. By the third time you’re like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen in this movie anymore.”

William Bibbiani: Talking about the plot for a second; looking back on it, it seems like the cultist’s plan was perhaps a little overly ornate. I mean, they have her in the house, they could have just hit her on the head and that could be that. At some point in development, did that come up? Or was that intentional, because a lot of films from that era have a kind of unnecessary elaboration…

Ti West: Yeah, I mean I think there was an element that like, yes, I suppose they could have done a lot of things. But they didn’t. I think there’s just an element where there’s some classic storytelling there. I wanted to bring sort of a modern realism to the very classic horror movie structure. So that’s kind of where that came in. But I really wanted the movie to be a mystery movie, and a follow-the-clues movie for a while there, so if she had just showed up at the door and they’d knocked her out it wouldn’t have been that movie. It would been a different movie. It would have been a whole movie in which she’s tied up and tortured, but I’m not interested in that movie. This was more interesting to me. I suppose you could say, “Well, it’s because they had to make sure that she was…” but I don’t know. I don’t know. This is just the movie that I was very interested in making.

Any interest in making a sequel?

Ti West: I don’t know. We’ll see if anyone shows up with money for that… But I like open-ended stuff. I like enigmatic stuff in horror movies. I like when you don’t fully understand when you leave the movie theater, you’re still thinking about it. “What was that? What did that mean?” I think that motivates you to be proactive in your movie-watching. Challenging movies require interaction… It’s not just mindless entertainment. That’s always been interesting to me, so I think that’s where the open-endedness comes from.

After a “Good Not Great” summer of blockbuster shenanigans comes Bronson, a cinematic breath of fresh air from jolly old England about the country’s most famous inmate, Michael Peterson – a.k.a. Charlie Bronson. But while Tom Hardy’s performance as the titular character deserves every bit of its acclaim, the film would not exist without the artistic vision of writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn. And yes, he’s color blind.

We sat down with Nicolas Winding Refn, director of Bronson, the Pusher Trilogy, Miss Marple: Nemesis and the upcoming Valhalla Rising, starring Casino Royale’s Mads Mikkelsen as a mute Viking warrior of supernatural strength. Find out about his difficulties shooting a film about a man in solitary confinement, making a Miss Marple movie just to work with Dr. Who (and taking his name off the project when that fell through), adapting Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde for Universal (starring Keanu Reeves), trying to make the first good Viking movie, and why technology is getting in the way of good science fiction…

NOW.

How did you come up with the abstract visual representation of Bronson talking to the audience?

Nicolas Winding Refn: When you’re making a movie about a guy in solitary confinement it’s very tricky, because either you can take a route that’s all about in a cell… that wasn’t the wisest thing I felt. I wanted to make it almost like this was a stage performance. A guy would come out on stage and he would talk about his life and we would visualize that. And that’s kind of like the structure of the film. Then, I always wanted to make a Kenneth Anger movie…

William Bibbiani: That explains the poo!

Nicolas Winding Refn: You could say that Bronson is a combination of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Scorpio Rising.

In the movie, Charlie Bronson seems much more sophisticated and articulate than one would imagine most convicts would be in real life.

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, he’s quite a clever man. If he had not gone to prison he would probably be one of the biggest advert executives out of England, because he’s very clever. The guy was able to create his own mythology, you know? I wasn’t making a biopic of Michael Peterson, I had no interest in making a biopic. I wanted to make a movie about the transformation of becoming Charlie Bronson, which is this larger than life concept, “brand” out of the U.K. that represents anti-authority.

When he’s out of prison it seems like he has a really hard time interacting with people, but then in the scenes where he’s in prison it seems like he has an easier time speaking his mind. And then the scenes when he’s on stage, he’s very articulate. Is that based on research?

Nicolas Winding Refn: No. I did not do the research on him, and I never met him. I didn’t even meet his family members because I didn’t want to make a biopic… Bronson is probably the closest I’ll ever come to making a biography. But structure-wise it was divided into three sections. First section was him on stage talking about his life, wanting us to see how he wanted his life to be perceived. He’s very articulate, he’s very flamboyant, he’s very open… Second act, he’s released [for] 69 days. You actually get to see his difficulties relating to the outside world. He’s like a Hans Christian Andersen character, he’s like a tin soldier walking around in a world he doesn’t understand, he can’t relate to. He’s too emotional for anything. He meets a girl, he falls in love with her. He doesn’t understand that there are different agendas, or love can be different things… He’s very primal in that sense. And the third act is basically now the audience seeing Charlie from their point of view. The movie shifts into that degree. So that’s why at the end he fully transforms himself into the Charlie Bronson “brand.”

How did you find Tom Hardy for this role? Was it difficult for him to do this particular character day after day?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Tom was kind of an interesting choice because first we met, and we didn’t like each other. We met in a wine bar in London, and he’s an alcoholic, or an ex-alcoholic, and I don’t drink alcohol. And it couldn’t have gone worse. I was like, “It’s not going to work,” and I’m sure he found me very arrogant, and he went off to do some plays and some other stuff, and I went off to kind of look for other actors. I think in the end, deep down the fault was mine because I didn’t know what I really wanted, or I didn’t know what I didn’t want, because I really hadn’t decided how to imagine the film. I hadn’t written it yet, I just had this idea. Of course, for many years people had been trying to make a movie about him in England. But once I kind of started writing it and gone around to meet actors… I met with a few Hollywood stars, Jason Statham and Guy Pearce were definitely into the picture, I met with them in various places. They were very nice, but I guess they didn’t take it very serious, that’s all… The casting director kept saying that I should meet with Tom, and I’m like, “I’m not reading with Tom.” I was being very childish. And in the end, there was nobody else. So kind of it was like inevitable. So, “Let’s meet again.” We met again about seven months later, but by then I basically knew what I didn’t want, so I was more specific and Tom had done a lot of other stuff in between, so meeting again it was like, “Oh my God, you’re Charlie Bronson! Where have you been?”

Did that conflict work for your relationship as you shot the movie?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, I’m sure it helped us as we started working together but it became a great marriage. I immensely enjoyed working with him. It was very tough for him, because I had under a million dollars to make the total movie, I had five weeks to shoot the movie, so for Tom, yeah, he was under a lot of pressure. He had six weeks to prepare, to pump up.

Did you shoot the movie in chronological order?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I shoot all my films in chronological order.

William Bibbiani: Where do the theatrical sequences in front of the audience fall in chronological order?

Nicolas Winding Refn: We shot that at the end, because it’s basically him, Charlie Bronson, seeing the world from his point of view. So I shot the whole movie [as a] build up to those stage performances, and then after I did the stage performances, at the end, on the last day, I shot the close-up of him almost narrating his life.

Does the real Charlie Bronson get any kind of royalties?

Nicolas Winding Refn: No, because in the U.K. it’s not allowed. So for him, he doesn’t get anything out of it. His family gets a little bit, like a fee… but there are no back ends, there are no kickbacks, because it’s not allowed. And I think Charlie should be happy enough that a film was made about him. I mean, the guy thinks it’s the greatest film ever made. He’s never seen it.

William Bibbiani: Will he? Can he?

Nicolas Winding Refn: No. No, he’ll never see it. He’ll never be allowed to watch it. I’ve been told he heard it, on the telephone, but no, he’ll never… I mean, his mother came to see it at the premiere. She very much liked it, so that was very nice. That made me very happy of course. But otherwise no, and he’s just been shut down completely, meaning that he’s been moved to a new isolation ward, and all the people that were in contact with him that were part of the filmmaking have been cut off. So he’s completely isolated now.

William Bibbiani: That sucks. That’s sad.

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, that depends on what’s your point of view I suppose. (Laughs.)

William Bibbiani: Well… it seems unfortunate.

In the trailer, Bronson appears very calculating, as opposed to the actual film, where he has no concrete plan.

Nicolas Winding Refn: He’s clarified “Sane” clinically, but obviously his perception of life is very different. But that was the whole point of what I found interesting. I mean, Charlie Bronson, or Michael Peterson, has never murdered anybody. Never… He’s more like a conceptual artist. He’s like somebody that uses violence as an act of art. And I do believe art IS an act of violence, so [there are] a lot of references to him in my own life, so Charlie Bronson’s journey, his transformation, is very much about my own transformation.

Do you think that Charlie Bronson was always in there, or do you think that being placed in the system was a catalyst for this transformation?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I think it’s both. I think it was there, but becoming in prison was the switch that began letting it out.

You’d think that he wouldn’t want to be in prison. You think he’d change his behavior to get out, rather than stay in.

Nicolas Winding Refn: That’s the big question mark, and that was why it was very difficult to write, because that’s the first obstacle you have. Why would anybody, who was a clearly intelligent, normal heterosexual man want to stay all his life in solitary confinement? And it really was his own subconscious that led to the key for me, because I was really trying to come up with, “Hang on, doing a prison movie’s hard in itself because it’s all about escaping and trying to escape, or planning on escaping, or somebody else helping you plan to escape…” And he’s not institutionalized. It’s not like a political comment of prisons and civilizations and vice-versa. But I was reading his biography just trying to come up with some kind of angle into him, and in that he talks about at one point, very late in the book, [how] he “always wanted to be here.” I said, “Oh my God, he’s answered the whole thing himself.” This is his stage… He almost craved it. That thread through everything he does is narcissism, narcissism to such a degree that fame is his feeding frenzy. So he was willing to sacrifice everything to become famous.

What can you tell us about Valhalla Rising?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Valhalla Rising was just picked up by IFC at Toronto [for] early next year, and it’s a Viking film. It’s actually the first canvas of images that I came up with after doing Bronson, because I shot the films back-to-back. And Charlie Bronson being my own psychoanalyzation of my own transformation, from where I started to what I’ve become; so Valhalla Rising is the start of Phase Two of my career.

What sort of reality does it take place in, as we might interpret the “reality” of Bronson? What’s the reality of the Viking world, and their mythology?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Very different. (Laughs.) It’s about the concept of mythology, and what mythology can create, and Mythology versus Christianity… and the conflict between those two things. The film is about a mute warrior who has no past or present, who escapes his captivity and travels with Christian Vikings to the Holy Land to fight the first war, but they get entangled in a mist that doesn’t lift until they reach America, and then it goes horribly wrong.

William Bibbiani: There aren’t terribly many good Viking movies…

Nicolas Winding Refn: There are none! (Laughs.)

William Bibbiani: I was being generous. (EDITOR’S NOTE: BOTH ERIC THE VIKING AND THE 13TH WARRIOR HAVE THEIR CHARMS.) Historically, from an artistic standpoint, what’s inspired Valhalla Rising for you?

Nicolas Winding Refn: That’s a very good question, and it’s something that I can’t specifically answer. I guess just the challenge of doing a Viking film by itself was so absurd that it kind of turned me on, but I’ve had specific ideas since I was 17, like the story, it’s just kind of been evolving. And then after the Pusher Trilogy I decided I wanted to make that, but then I needed money to buy out my ex-partner, so I could own the movie complete, which is also one of the reasons why I decided to write and direct Bronson. Just to get some quick bucks.

You said that Bronson was kind of your Kenneth Anger film, so what’s Valhalla Rising?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Basically, Valhalla Rising for me is the films that I grew up loving so much. It’s like Snake Plissken and [Andrei] Tarkovsky. (Laughter.)

You did a Miss Marple movie a couple of years ago…

Nicolas Winding Refn: I did two, actually, because when I came over, I came over because I was SO broke… and they called me before I arrived, I arrogantly turned them down, but when they called again I was so desperate that I just said “Yes.” “Do you want to read the script?” “No, just give me the money!” (Laughs.) So I came over and they fired director of the first one, [so] I just did that one as well. But I didn’t want to be credited, because [I didn’t shoot all of it]. But I only said “yes” to do it because I had hoped to meet Tom Baker, who played one of my favorite Dr. Who’s, but they didn’t want to go back and reshoot his scenes so I got pissed off, so I said, “I’ll do it and I’ll charge you a fortune, but I don’t want to be credited.”

What are you prepping now?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I would like to make a film that I just completed writing in Asia. I wanted to do a Western in Bangkok called, “Only God Forgives.” But on top of that I’m attached to make some Hollywood films, a remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at Universal with Keanu Reeves and there’s another movie in the Hollywood system called The Dying of the Light, which is a Paul Schrader script that I really liked a lot… But all of those bigger films are part of a domino effect, you gotta get all the right dominoes to go down, where my own films, my own productions are shot on very healthy budgets and I can just go and make them when I want to make them, which is very important to me because I don’t want to wait. I like to make films.

Are you writing the script to Jekyll and Hyde?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I was asked, but I felt that I wasn’t the right one. With all the other stuff I had going on, I was almost so overwhelmed that I thought that I wouldn’t give it the right attention.

Who’s doing it?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Justine Haythe, which is very nice. He wrote Revolutionary Road.

What’s the take on Jekyll and Hyde? Traditional? Period?

Nicolas Winding Refn: I want to do a modern day retelling of the same story, which makes it very tricky because it certainly elevates the project into something more demanding.

We imagine Keanu Reeves would be an American Dr. Jekyll?

Nicolas Winding Refn: That is very right. (Laughter.)

Do you have any genre-specific filmmaking desires?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Well, my biggest wish is to do a horror movie and a romantic comedy. I just want to do a romantic comedy because those are the kind of movies my wife and I watch. I really like to make funny things. My biggest wish is to do a “Pretty Woman” kind of movie, and I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen because it’s always difficult for me to write and so I have to find them somewhere. Horror films are of course my favorite genre and of course I’d love to make one, but for some reason I’m always struggling to make one.

William Bibbiani: So Jekyll and Hyde doesn’t fall into the horror genre for you?

Nicolas Winding Refn: What’s difficult about Jekyll and Hyde is that it’s a “concept” more than anything else… It’s like the concept for a werewolf movie, or American Psycho. It’s the thing we all have, but how do you dramatize that in a new, interesting way?

William Bibbiani: By setting it in the present day, does that mean you have to be more plausible with the science? Is that a concern of yours? Because a hundred years ago science was all potions…

Nicolas Winding Refn: You have a lot of credibility that needs to work, you know? You can’t just say things because we all know you can just Google it.

William Bibbiani: In the theater now!

Nicolas Winding Refn: They can even Google it as they’re watching it! In Valhalla Rising, I always wanted to make a science fiction movie, but because I had no interest in the technology of science fiction I made a mental science fiction movie. I find it difficult to make one in the future now because technology always kind of goes against mythology and the concept of science fiction, so I decided to do it in the 1100s instead.

A lot of filmmakers start out making horror films because they’re the easiest to get off the ground, why is it that you didn’t take that route if you’re so interested in them?

Nicolas Winding Refn: Because gangster films are more accessible and they’re easier to sell. That’s why I made the Pushers. But I had no interest in gangster films, I just wanted to make a movie about people in a criminal environment. But the reason I always make genre films is because genre films can work at a very commercial level, very simple, and you can put so much into them. Among all the great filmmakers,  from John Ford to Dreyer, all worked in genres in a way, and you were able to hide things but still have a great commercial liability. I’m not a big… The French New Wave revolutionize my parents’ view of filmmaking, but for me it was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. And not the remake.

Bobcat Goldthwait’s brilliant new black comedy World’s Greatest Dad premieres in theaters this Friday, but right now Geekscape has roundtable interviews with writer/director Goldthwaite, and his stars Robin Williams and Alexie Gilmore!

Sadly, it is almost impossible to discuss World’s Greatest Dad without discussing its more shocking twists and turns, so we here at Geekscape are posting the largest SPOILER WARNING!!! possible right at the top of these delightful interviews about life, death, sex, nudity and what all of those things have to do with World’s Greatest Dad.

ALEXIE GILMORE:

How was it playing Robin Williams’ love interest?

Alexie Gilmore: Very cool, I’ve got to say. You work with somebody like Robin, and it’s like, impossible to look bad. It’s like wearing diamonds. You’re going to look good. So I was really, really lucky to be playing opposite him so much, and Daryl Sabara (who plays Robin Williams’ son) who is extremely talented as well, and Bobcat just made this amazing script. I mean, as soon as I read it I was like, “Uh, I’d love to be in this. I’d love to be a part of it.” And then I got to be in it, so it’s pretty cool.

Were you worried about “keeping up” with Robin before you got on set with him?

Alexie Gilmore: (Laughs) – Yeah, I was definitely intimidated, but as soon as I got on set and I met Robin, he was saying, “It is such an honor to meet you.” It made me feel so special, you know? I just felt so fortunate that there was no ego on set at all, and Bobcat really made a point of making sure I felt comfortable as well. Because sometimes we’d improv some scenes, and he’d like, “I just want to make sure that you’re not losing your lines or anything.” I know that you’re dealing with all these comedians and everyone’s just all over each other, but everyone was just so respectful in that way.

Despite the presence of so many comedians, World’s Greatest Dad is in many ways a very serious film. What was the atmosphere between the shots?

Alexie Gilmore: Oh, pretty light. I mean, Bobcat would come to the set with a shower cap on, or a kilt. Every day was a new day. It was always exciting. So it was definitely light, and everyone having a good time in between. And I think that’s the great thing about the movie. It has a good balance of that comedy and darkness, and you see how close they are, too. I think he balanced that very well on this film.

You got to make out with Robin Williams and Henry Simmons (a little bit)…

Alexie Gilmore: Yeah, Henry and I don’t actually make out, but there’s a lot of flirting going on there.

That’s quite a dichotomy!

Alexie Gilmore: Yeah! It was. It was fun to be able to play… not just the arm candy, or just the girlfriend, that there was stuff going on underneath it all, and to be a person that people are not really sure about. “Is she really aware of how mean she can be sometimes?” It’s been funny to see the reaction [from] people, like we were at the CineVegas Film Festival and this woman in front, like, hated me. Everything that came out of my mouth, every time I said something she was like “Oh my God!”

…And it was so funny because we were all sitting behind her, me and Bobcat and the Darko guys, we were all just laughing like, “I guess she doesn’t know that she’s talking outside.” I think that’s very much Bobcat’s style, too. I think he pushes people’s buttons a little bit, and he knows how to do that in such a way that makes people really feel things.

Was there any special preparation you underwent to gear up for this role?

Alexie Gilmore: Yeah, I interviewed a lot of bitches. (Laughs.) When I read it I was like, “I know this girl.” Everyone knows a girl like that, but for me I didn’t see her as an evil person. I saw her as someone who really thought she was always doing the best thing. So for me, the key to playing her was really playing her sincerity, because I think most people don’t know what they’re doing sometimes.

There were a lot of opportunistic elements to Alexie’s character, like when she’s getting ready for the TV show. How did you approach that without being too overt about it? How did you keep her lovable, almost until the end?

Alexie Gilmore: I think it was always the way it was written, like, “Oh, you’re not mad at me, right?” She’ll say things and always make sure that she’s lovable in the eyes of whoever she’s in front of, you know? So I think that, for me, it was always making sure that she was still liked no matter what. It comes from that need of like, “I really want this, but I want to make sure that I do it in the best way possible because I want people to like me.” So that was what I always tried to do, just make it as nice as possible, even though I was saying some really shitty things.

How did it feel to be the one who makes Robin Williams laugh?

Alexie Gilmore: Oh my God, it’s so awesome to crack up Robin! The first time I cracked him up, when we were in the dinner scene… I actually ad-libbed that line, “I’m hurting right now,” and he totally cracked the first time I did it. He looked at me and was like, “You’re one of us now.” I was so glad I got validated by Robin Williams! (Laughs.)

What was Bobcat like to work with as a director?

Alexie Gilmore: He is just the sweetest man ever, I think. I didn’t know him at all. I got cast in New York on tape, and from that met everyone for the first time there. I’d only spoken to him on the phone. He’s just so understated, but you know he’s got everything under control. He always just has the best demeanor. I just want to work with him more and more. I hope I get to do other projects with him because I had just a wonderful career experience.

William Bibbiani: Had you seen either of [Bobcat’s] other films (Shakes the Clown, Sleeping Dogs Lie)?

Alexie Gilmore: I hadn’t! I hadn’t seen any of them, so I didn’t know that he was so talented as a director and a writer.

William Bibbiani: Have you seen them since?

Alexie Gilmore: No! I actually haven’t seen them. (Laughs.) Don’t write that! That’s our secret! I have Sleeping Dogs Lie at home, Netflixed. “I have to see this before I see him again!” And I still haven’t gotten to see it because I just got a TV. I just moved. (Laughs.)

Someone adds that Shakes the Clown is a classic.

Alexie Gilmore: I know, I know, and actually when I got cast, my sister and her husband love that movie, and they were, “Oh my God! Shakes the Clown was great!” “Um, yeah! Cool! That’s who I’m working with.” And they were like, “Awesome.” So I hadn’t seen it, but after this thing I have to go see all of them.

William Bibbiani: Not many of Robin Williams’ leading ladies get to have a sex scene with him.

Alexie Gilmore: I know.

William Bibbiani: What was it like to live the dream?

Alexie Gilmore: (Laughs) – It was something else! You know, the funny part is that scene was very rough… It was really supposed to be like, I’m [saying] “Strangle me! Pull my hair!” By the time that we were done, I felt like we’d been through a war. But they were going to have him strangle me, and he gets freaked out the strangling thing but it end up just being like… (Laughs). The sex scene was, we were fully clothed and everything and Bobcat was funny. He’s like, “I don’t think the world’s ready to see Robin Williams have the ‘Sexy Sex Scene.’” He just wanted it to be funny, and that’s what it was about and I was glad to do that.

ROBIN WILLIAMS & BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT:

How did two self-professed comedians like Robin Williams and Bobcat Goldthwait manage to make such a serious film?

Bobcat Goldthwait: You know what it was? It’s not just Robin, but a lot of comedians are in this movie.

Robin Williams: Oh yeah. Pretty much every other person.

Bobcat Goldthwait: And I knew that, like, me saying, “Hey guys, come on. We’ve got to get serious…”

Robin Williams: Yeah, he’s wearing a coonskin hat. “Yeah, thank you Daniel Boone.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: “Dude, you set the Tonight Show on fire. We’re supposed to wise up around you?” But there really would be times when everyone would just go mental for a while, and then, “Now it’s nap time. Let’s film.”

How far back do you two guys go?

Robin Williams: Thirty years. To the dawn of time.

Asking Bobcat about writing a character like Daryl Sabara’s Kyle, was he based on anyone Bobcat really knew?

Bobcat Goldthwait: No. If it was true I would lie right now, but the kid’s not based on a kid I know but about a day in Robin goes, “Oh, I’m playing you.” I’m like, “Yeah…” (Laughs.) But you (indicating William Bibbiani) said it reminded you of your high school. It’s weird, the tragedy that hit the generation above me was that they all had a guy they went to high school with that may have died in Vietnam, or beyond that. But then anyone below that, there’s a really common story [of] some jerk in their school that passes away and everybody reinvents them. I think that it’s a really immature instinct, you know, to make it all about them.

Is it true that it took two women to wax Robin Williams?

Robin Williams: Yes.

And they had to take a break?

Robin Williams: Yes. (At this point, Robin Williams segues into a cacophony of funny voices that are, admittedly very funny… just not so much in print.) They actually did, it was like, literally, they were working, rip rip! And then they were finally like, do you mind if we take a break?” (Laughs.) I felt really bad.

Bobcat Goldthwait: They said they were sure they got carpal tunnel in the middle of it.

Did you have to take painkillers or anything beforehand?

Robin Williams: No, after a while you get used to it.

Bobcat: I did, looking at his hog all day. (Laughs.)

Was that Robin Williams’ first nude scene?

Robin Williams: No, actually it was my second one. My first one was in Fisher King, where I was nude in Central Park, but it was a cold night so that’s my excuse. (Laughs.)

Was it a cold pool in World’s Greatest Dad?

Robin Williams: No, a warm pool!

Bobcat Goldthwait: No, no, trust me, it wasn’t a Dirk Diggler special effect.

Robin Williams: “Is that a boom shadow? Noooooooo!!!”

Bobcat Goldthwait: The whole afternoon we were filming it, I was like, “I have idea why you’re insecure.” (Laughs.)

Robin Williams: But it was weird, because the idea of being nude in that scene I guess was, “Listen, at the end he’s kind of shedding everything.” I went, “Maybe I should go full in.” “Okay.” And that’s kind of how we work. It wasn’t done for like, “This will be a laugh.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: Or a shock.

Robin Williams: It’s more of an emotional thing. It’s cathartic. At that point you’re going full tilt breakdown. What’s going on?

Bobcat Goldthwait: And I also thought that if every single shot in that series was framed in a way in which his garbage was framed out, it would have seemed kind of trite. It would have been saying to the audience, “You’re not grown-ups. You can’t see a penis.”

But you kept your socks on, right?

Robin Williams: Yeah, that’s what most guys would do. (Laughs.) Half the guys [here] are going, “Yeah…” (Editor’s Note: We were.) “I never take my socks off, girl. I never go full socks… If I take my socks off, that means we’re in love.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: The ankles are the gateway to a man’s soul. And that’s another discussion for my costume designer, whom I’m banging – that’s my girlfriend – she said… by the end of the movie Lance has disappeared completely, and we thought that that was just the last little bit of him: his humanity, that’s the little bit of creativity that was left in him. And I also like the idea that when he was going in with those socks, people think he might slip and break his neck or something. So I like to put that out there too.

Does Robin’s constant shifting between comedic and very serious roles created any casting problems in his career?

Robin Williams: In the amount of work I’m getting? That explains why I’m going back out on the road. (Laughs.) I mean, it’s been interesting to do both, and also to do – like I’ve done dark movies like One Hour Photo, but to do a dark comedy like this? We’ll see. We’ll see how it affects work. I mean, I’ve obviously done studio movies, but I did this movie because I read it and I went, “This is really interesting.” I wasn’t doing it as a mercy film for Bob. “Let’s help little Bobby out.” (Laughs.) …This is really good, and I saw his other movies, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, and I went, “He’s fearless.” When you have a movie where a girl basically fellates a dog and goes, “Let’s see what happens.” With this one I’m going, “I know that he can handle something really bizarre upfront and then get down to some kind of really interesting humanity.” And that’s why I did this movie.

Did the Disney-esque sound of the title throw you?

Bobcat Goldthwait: I was just kind of being snarky when I called it “World’s Greatest Dad.” I have a secret: I really do hope some families show up. (Laughs.)

Robin Williams: “Hey Mom, what’s fisting?” “You know, Jimmy, your Uncle Bob used to do that.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: At least they won’t be [shocked after] thirty-five minutes. At least they’ll be [running out] after three minutes…

Robin Williams: I love that the French distributor said, “We’re just going to call it, ‘Dad.’” (Laughs.) That’s a very French thing. “There’s no such thing as ‘World’s Greatest.’ It’s just ‘Dad.’”

Bobcat Goldthwait: My last movie had no problem in France. They were like, “Sure, I believe an American girl blows a dog.”

Robin Williams: “Who doesn’t do this in America? So what? She blows a dog? What goes on then?”

How does Bobcat Goldthwait feel about the similarities between the death of Daryl Sabara’s character and the actual death of actor David Carradine?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Well, his family recently came out and said they thought that it might have been kung fu assassins, and I wish I was joking but they really did.

Robin Williams: They went the opposite way. In this movie…

Bobcat Goldthwait: I want to clear that up. Daryl’s character did not die from kung fu assassins. I would feel bad if it was a punchline, the way the kid died, but it’s not a punchline because I needed a way…

Robin Williams: The motivation for my character, immediately when he finds him that way, is “I don’t want him to be remembered like this.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: And it kind of starts him on his lying trajectory in a weird way, because when he first starts becoming dirty there are actually viable and sincere reasons to lie.

William Bibbiani: I’d like to ask you about that, because that happens… it feels almost halfway through the film. It takes a while to get there, and a lot of films that would be the first-to-second act changeover.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah.

William Bibbiani: What was the idea behind putting it late enough in the film that no one could talk about it? Because we got this press release saying, “Whatever you do, don’t tell in your review that the son dies,” and we haven’t seen it yet.

Bobcat Goldthwait: Oh no!

Robin Williams: Yeah. “Titanic sinks!” “You bastards! You fucking told the ending!” …That was the great thing that a friend of ours who saw the movie last night said, “You made this really unrelenting prick kid, and now how are you going to redeem him? You didn’t. You killed him.” And that’s what Daryl’s, the fearlessness of his performance is, to be that nasty. Because it justifies everything… Well, when you start to deify him and you’re turning him into this amazingly sensitive kid, the audience is going, “No, he wasn’t.” And the one friend who’s going, “He never seemed like that, he never was like that.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: Well, you know in the movie, the scene at the newsstand where Robin falls apart because he sees porn and it reminds him of his son? You know, it’s Chris (Novoselic) from Nirvana, and we’re in Seattle and I used to open for Nirvana, so I called Chris up and I said, “I want you to be in this scene.” He goes, “Why?” And I said, “Because you’re funny.” He’s like, “I am?” …And he gets there and he goes, “What’s going on? What’s this about?” I went, “Sometimes when people die, people reinvent them in a way because they want to make it about themselves, and they lose sight of who this person really was, and that they really were a real person. I don’t know if you can relate to that.” And Chris just smiled, he said, “Oh, okay. I’m in.” (Laughs.)

Anyway, it was really funny when we were filming this scene, Chris was going, “I feel so bad. Robin Williams is so sad. I want to cheer him up.” I’m like, “No, don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”

Robin Williams: It’s kind of wonderful when he’s coming over and comforting me, and I’m standing next to “Ass Lickers.”

How did they feel about the subject matter, in regards to any of the friends in the industry they’ve lost over the years?

Robin Williams: The most wonderful thing that happened was, well it isn’t a wonderful thing. “Oh, greatest death!” Bob’s brother died and the reverend gave this amazing eulogy, where it was, “He loved animals.” And Bob…

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah, I went up in the church, and I go, “I don’t want to be rude, but my brother liked to kill animals… There’s a lot of deer out in the woods right now going, ‘Phew!’” (Laughs.)

Robin Williams: But in that moment the entire room was like, “Yeah” The people who knew him go, like, “Yeah man, that’s him.” And then that eulogy, the people get to remember the guy, the real guy. He was crazy.

Bobcat Goldthwait: A little person that I wasn’t aware of was a pallbearer, and I looked down and I said to my daughter, and I go, “It looks like he’s riding a subway.” (Laughs.) It really did. The other guys were lifting him into the air and his feet are dangling…

Robin Williams: At that moment, even God’s going, “Don’t you just love it? Don’t you just get the irony of this whole situation?” (Laughs.)

Bobcat Goldthwait: And that’s the kind of comedy that I’m most comfortable with. That’s the stuff that I’m interested in doing, and I know it seems like it’s for shock. I’m sure that subconsciously that’s what I’m thinking, but I don’t sit down and write these screenplays and go, “Oh, this is going to blow their asses through their face. This will freak everyone out.” Really, I’m writing what interests me, and it’s very freeing…

It’s funny, that scene at the newsstand, because I felt that your character, I was afraid that he was getting over the events too soon. I remember when my own Mom passed away, it was two weeks later when I really broke down. It wasn’t immediately, and so that’s why I put that scene in.

As a father, were the grieving scenes the most difficult to do?

Robin Williams: Yeah, the most difficult scene of all is to think of losing my son. I mean, even thinking of it now, I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine losing my boy, or my daughter. It’s this weird thing, he said, “Can you do this?” “Oh yeah,” it wasn’t hard… it would be, your world falls apart. Everything falls apart. You’re devastated. It doesn’t matter how old you are. I’ve talked to people who are in their eighties and nineties, and their son dies, and they’re going, “I thought I’d always go before him.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah, that happened to my old man.

Robin Williams: And also, the idea of my initial motivation, the thing where he writes the note or whatever, I don’t want him to be remembered like this. It isn’t like he’s going, “This is a chance to be a great writer.”

Bobcat Goldthwait: No, because that can’t happen to your character at that point.

Robin Williams: And the weird thing when you mention Carradine is his family went the opposite way. “He wasn’t depressed. He was kinky, but he wasn’t depressed.” So they went the other way. This is the honesty of it.

Bobcat Goldthwait: It’s kind of weird culturally that suicide is, “Oh sure, suicide. We all understand that. Masturbating with a belt around your neck? That’s weird.”

Is there such a thing as a selfless lie?

Bobcat Goldthwait: (Thinks) – Yes… If you’re telling a lie, and that lie is out of kindness and it’s not about reinventing yourself and making yourself look better… or where you benefit. You’re just doing it out of kindness, then I do believe that that’s the high road.

Robin Williams: It’s kind of like that movie you had before, Sleeping Dogs Lie, where sometimes the truth is not always the best thing, especially in terms of a relationship… When she tells him, eventually, that, it’s…

Bobcat Goldthwait: A lot of people are bullies when they go, “Hey man, it’s just the truth. I’m just telling you how it is.” Yeah, you’re just being a lout. So I’d written a movie like that, and now I wanted to write one where someone has to grow up and be honest, even though it might mean that they would lose all the shiny things that are popular in American culture.

After a question about how Robin is feeling after his open-heart surgery (quite well, apparently), the conversation turned to second chances:

Bobcat Goldthwait: In regards to second chances… people have probably written myself off, and I think people probably didn’t expect great things from the kid from Spy Kids, and I’m sure we all had our questions about Bruce Hornsby (laughs). To me, in a weird way, that’s another weird and awesome thing that’s come out of this movie.

From Stan Lee and POW! Entertainment comes Time Jumper, a new animated comic book exclusively available on iTunes this summer. Lee created this tale of Terry Dixon, the owner of a time travel device specifically tuned to his family DNA. With his hotshot superspy brother mysteriously missing, it falls to Terry to use the device for H.U.N.T. (Heroes United, Noble and True) to save the world. He just doesn’t want to. We spoke to Natasha Henstridge, starring as the villainous Charity Vyle, and creator Stan Lee, who also guest stars as Lee Excelsior, CEO of H.U.N.T.!

First came Natasha Henstridge, best known for her roles in Species and The Whole Nine Yards.

What is the funniest moment that you can remember from your interaction with Stan Lee?

Natasha Henstridge: (Pause) – I just think he’s so adorable, and such a flirt too. He’s so sweet, so lovely. We’re doing pictures, he’s like, “Is that it? I could stay here all day! Are you sure you got it?” He’s (got a) fabulous, animated voice. He’s a lovely guy, to be the legend that he is but genuinely have that childlike love of what he does, still, and also to be able to be with the people still and not alienate people. He’s really amazing in that way.

What was it about it about Violet that grabbed you?

Natasha Henstridge: Um… She’s brilliant? I love playing those characters… finally I get to have one of those Dr. Evil finger at the corner of the mouth moments in your career where you really get to go for it. So it’s not an undercurrent, like she’s a little bit nasty, but full-on, “This Woman Wants to Take Over the World and Change History and Future As We Know It.” It’s just fun to play a character like that.

William Bibbiani: Is this medium freeing for you at all? You’re doing such short episodes, where you’re given so little time in each individual one with the character. Does that allow you to play it a bit more openly than perhaps you would normally?

Natasha Henstridge: You know what? I love that. I love that we actually went in and did five episodes back-to-back so you know exactly where you came from and exactly where you’re going. And there’s five episodes, so it’s not like you’re coming back after weeks and days of sitting in your trailer for hours on end in between, and “Oh God, where was I then?” In that way, you really stay super-connected in the moment to exactly what’s happening to you.

William Bibbiani: You did it all in one day?

Natasha Henstridge: (Nods) – We did five episodes in one day.

Are you contracted to do a certain number of episodes?

Natasha Henstridge: I think, like anything, it will all depend on the reception. But we’re doing ten so far.

How many are you willing to do? What if this goes on forever?

Natasha Henstridge:  I would love that. Because you know what the beauty of it is? They can keep me looking young forever. (Laughs.)

When asked about the difficulty in retaining vocal qualities over extended periods:

Natasha Henstridge: Well you do kind of have to remember… Like when I go back, having done the first five, it will be interesting to go back and do the next five. I will have seen them at that point, so that’ll help a little bit. Because you can lose it a little bit, too. As we were going through the first five, we’d take a little break and then come back. You do forget where you were tone-wise or something. “Oh, I’m a little bit girlier now,” or something, you know? And they bring you back, you work with people, in this case the director… who keeps you very aware of what you’re doing, because he does that kind of thing all the time. So he can really hear it and listen for that.

Have you had any vocal acting training?

Natasha Henstridge: I’ve never had any training. Of any kind. Even at the gym. (Laughs.) …I’ve always liked voice-work. I did a little bit on South Park, and then I got an agent to start doing voice stuff because I have a lot of wacky voices I like to do, a lot of funny, cartoony-type things. I have my own little characters that I’ve made up and stuff, as well. I’m just waiting for the chance.

Someone jumps on it: Can we hear them now?

Natasha Henstridge: (Suddenly Helium-ish) – Some of them are just weird and funny, and one is called Chamomile. She makes people happy. (Normal) – There’s just lots of funny things… A lot of weird stuff… I like Chamomile because there’s nothing relaxing about that voice at all.

Some Guy: What do you know about Fanboys?

Natasha Henstridge: Um, I don’t… You mean the actual…

William: He means us.

Natasha Henstridge: He means you guys?

William: Yeah.

Natasha Henstridge: Fanboys is a magazine, or is…?

Some Guy: There’s a movie.

William: There’s a movie called Fanboys, and a lot of publications that have utilized the term, but “fanboys” are just people who are…

Natasha Henstridge: Fanboys. Boys who are fans. And girls.

William: Well, people who are passionate about genre material, or a certain medium.

Natasha Henstridge: I think anyone who is dedicated to something, no matter what it is, if they have a passion for something and a dedication for something, I think it’s very cool… Comics, music, I mean we all have our thing.

Next came Stan Lee, all-powerful God of Geekdom. The “Man,” if you will. Upon his arrival, a publicist presents a stack of Time Jumper posters signed earlier by Stan.

Stan Lee: She forces you to take them whether you like ‘em or not.

Publicist: No, no!

Stan Lee: They’re sitting here right now, “Another thing I gotta carry home…”

Publicist: All your hard work of signing them went to good use!

Stan Lee: Well, I hope it’s appreciated. (Laughs)

Why bring Time Jumper to Disney, as opposed to an imprint of Marvel?

Stan Lee: Well, I have this little company, POW Entertainment, which of course stands for “Purveyors of Wonder” – but I’m sure you’ve figured that out – and POW Entertainment has an arrangement with Disney. We have what they call a “First Look” deal. Anything that I come up with I have to offer to the Disney company first. If they want to do it, great! If they don’t want to do it, then we’re free to sell it anywhere else. So when I had the idea for Time Jumper I of course offered it to Disney, they liked the idea, and the rest is history.

Was Stan going to be a character in the series from the beginning? Was that “part of the deal?”

Stan Lee: The fact that I’m in it? That I’m “The Star?” No, that was their idea. I never insist on that with anything! I love doing it, but they came up with the idea, which I got a big kick out of.

William Bibbiani: I saw you at the panel and you were really excited about new “animated comic” medium that you’re going for here. (But) you also said that the story came first. Did you come up with the story and then come up with the idea to do it as an animated comic book, or did you really want to do an animated comic book and are now looking to find some story to work with in that medium?

Stan Lee: No, the story really came first. And then, as I was talking to the people at POW, they had heard about this type of “near” animation, and they thought it would be a good idea. I just found out about this – I didn’t realize, somebody just told me – I thought that we just gave Disney the story and they came up with this process, but apparently WE suggested this process to Disney… But they of course embellished on it… and I think they did a wonderful job.

William Bibbiani: Well, it’s really funny, because I was actually introduced to your work through the cartoons from the 1960’s – Thor and Iron Man – and they were also very limited animation, and they all just seemed like Jack Kirby’s panels in close-up with some voice-overs. This is very in keeping with your works. I was wondering if that had anything to do with it, or if no one even thought about that?

Stan Lee: Those old cartoons were funny. Sometimes it was just a drawing from the book and they’d move the lips.

William Bibbiani: Sometimes they didn’t even bother moving the lips! “Why bother? It’s fine.”

Stan Lee: (Laughs) – Moving the lips? Those were the expensive versions.

William Bibbiani: Your words were so magical…

Stan Lee: Oh, I like this guy.

William Bibbiani: That they supersede lip synching.

Stan Lee: I hope nobody says anything after that to spoil that. (Gets up) – And on that happy note, it was nice seeing you. (Laughs.)

In 2013 (just off the top of someone’s head), when Superman’s creators own the copyright to the character and he is no longer wholly owned by DC, would Stan be interested snatching him up for the Marvel Universe?

Stan Lee: Have Superman be part of the Marvel Universe…? I had never thought of it. See, I’m with Marvel, but I’m not really part of the Marvel decision-making team. I think my title is “Chairman Emeritus,” which really doesn’t mean much, because I spend most of my time with POW. The only thing (is) Marvel, to prove they haven’t forgotten me… I have these cameos in the movies which is kind of nice. And people still come to the movies. That’s nice.

Some Guy: You’re still the magic, so…

Stan Lee: Don’t you forget it. (Laughs.)

The Same Guy asks what Stan’s story would be for Superman.

Stan Lee: I did a Superman story once. I don’t know if you ever saw that series, “What if Stan Lee had created…” (EDITOR’S NOTE: It was called “Just Imagine,” if any of our readers wants to track them down in trade paperback). I did that a few years ago. I did one with Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, about ten of them. I’d go back and I’d have to read that. I think I had Superman (as) a guy from another planet, but he was, I think, a criminal, and he landed on Earth… I forget what the Hell I did. It was a great story though. I think John Buscema illustrated it.

I never can remember the stuff I write. That’s really tragic, because it’s all good.

Is it hard to come up with an original idea these days?

Stan Lee: Yes. It’s always been hard but it gets harder all the time because just about everything has been done! I’ve got a little file of ideas that I’m going to present to Disney and other companies in a while; new heroic characters. And the one thing about them, I didn’t bother to write the whole story. I just have why they’re different from the characters who around now, and that takes a lot of thinking because if you think about it… You think about super powers, we’ve already got characters who can fly, who can shoot fire from their hands or are invisible, whatever you think of it’s been done. And yet you want to keep coming up with new characters, so it gets harder and harder. Luckily, being something of a genius I’m able to handle it. (Laughs.)

How much was Disney involved in the creative process? Did they leave him alone because he’s Stan Lee?

Stan Lee: No, no. Well, I wish people did have that attitude (laughs), but no, I act as the producer, and they do the story, they do the artwork. They send it to me for my comments, and what they do is so great my comments are very minor. The one comment I had was when one of the characters is saying something, and you put the words on the screen, open his mouth! Don’t have him drawn with his mouth shut while he’s supposed to be talking. I think that happened once or twice, it didn’t mean anything. But that’s about the level of my suggestions. They really are so good at what they do. I’m in awe of them.

How about Stan’s involvement with the actors? Natasha said she loved working with Stan.

Stan Lee: Well, I’m a joy to work with.

William Bibbiani: She did call you a flirt. She’s spreading vicious, vicious lies.

Stan Lee: My wife better not read this!

Did Stan ever feel like he had to get involved in the voice-acting, giving comments, etc.?

Stan Lee: I would like to. I would like to be at all the audio recording sessions, but I’m not. I don’t have the time to go. And again, they know what they’re doing. They’re pretty good. I go to the ones where I say something so I can thrill to how beautifully I do it, but they’re professionals. Funny thing: in some of the releases I’ve seen “Stan Lee hired Natasha (Henstridge).” I didn’t hire her! They hired her! They told me about it! I (just) said, “That’s great!”

Some Guy tells Stan to just take the credit for it.

Stan Lee: I’ll probably end up taking the credit for it. I take the credit for everything.

Asking Stan about time travel, the stories get very convoluted. What guidelines or rules do they have in Time Jumper?

Stan Lee: Well, one of the guidelines is “Don’t be too damned convoluted.” No, just tell good stories. That’s the only guideline we ever have. Tell them so that people can understand them, and so that people want to see what comes next. There should always be some suspense, but that’s it. Same guidelines you have for any story.

So no complicated whiteboard at the office keeping everything straight?

Stan Lee: Well that’s really up to (pause, thinks)… Omar! The writer. I have no memory! He’s a great writer, I might add. His dialogue and the way he cuts from thing to thing, if you read the script it’s just like a motion picture script. He’s very good.

Asking about Stan Lee’s description of the medium, a “comic book of the air,” could he expand on that?

Stan Lee: “Of the air” because you’re sending it over the airwaves. It’s probably not the airwaves. That shows how much I know about technical things, but it goes out over the airwaves! You get it on your telephone, your cell phone, you get it over the internet. You’ll see it in all its glory with all its special effects and the movement and the noise and the music and the sounds, and it’s the next evolution of the comic book, I guess. Which doesn’t mean, and don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean it’ll replace the comic book. It’s not meant to replace the comic book anymore than television replaced movies, or books or anything. It’s just another form of comics, really, as far as I can tell.

Finally, someone asks Stan to wax philosophical about the state of comics, from his extended perspective.

Stan Lee: Well, where they are today… If you look at an old comic book, the kind I was doing in the sixties, and you look at a present day comic book, there’s such a difference right there because (in) the new comic books every panel is like some sort of a fantastic illustration. They’re colored by computer, the lettering is done by computer. You sort of want of want to cut out almost every panel and have it framed and hang it on the wall. They’re like OIL paintings in a way. Whereas the stuff we did, and the artists were magnificent, but they were doing three pages a day sometimes. Kirby would do four pages a day. Today the artists, they spend a day or day-and-a-half on one panel, coloring it and working on it. It’s slower and it’s more painstaking, and it almost looks like a different type of storytelling.

So comics have changed in the sense… oh, and also years ago you had comics writers who were like me. Just guys who wrote comics. Today, comics have become such a big business that you have people who write screenplays, who write novels, who are doing comics because they know if they write a good one there’s a chance that it will be made into a movie and it’ll make them. You know what I mean? So, the same with the artists: years ago it was really tough to get good artists to do comics. They could make more money in advertising. Today, every artist wants to do comics because they get to keep their original artwork after its published, and the ones who are really good, they can sell those original drawings for a hell of a lot of money at a comic book convention or at an auction. And that didn’t hold true years ago, so in that sense everything has changed.

But it still boils down: You need a good story, you need good drawings, it has to be well-written, and it has to grab the reader.

Terry Gilliam, the critically acclaimed director of Time Bandits, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and the only American member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, is an indelible part of the back story of any movie geek. But Gilliam has always been a relatable figure in the entertainment industry, partly because of his down to earth persona, but largely because practically all of his productions encounter serious production problems that he must struggle valiantly to overcome. From the studio interference on Brazil to the cataclysmic shooting difficulties that permanently shut down The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Gilliam has proven himself a modern Sisyphus, rolling each unforgiving boulder up a hill only to find that the same titanic effort awaits him shortly afterwards. Fortunately, most of his movies are well worth the effort.

Gilliam’s latest uphill battle, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, provided the director with one of his greatest challenges: completing a film after the death of its star, Heath Ledger, who died last year with only half of his performance completed. Sitting down for a roundtable discussion with Geekscape and others, Gilliam guided us through the difficult process of completing the film with three new actors (Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell), his latest attempt to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, and his thoughts on Zack Snyder’s The Watchmen, a film Gilliam himself attempted to make 20 years ago.

Terry Gilliam: (Entering, sitting down) – I’ve said it all out there. I’ve got nothing to say.

William Bibbiani: Well, we weren’t there, but that’s good! You’ve had practice, you can just say it all again.

At this point, one of the individuals at the roundtable asks Terry Gilliam the decision-making process behind completing the film without his star, Heath Ledger.

Terry Gilliam: Well, half the part’s done, what do you do? What do you do? You’ve got about 45% done… For the first couple days you’re like, “Fuck, this is ridiculous.” The challenge is actually to see if you could resuscitate my energy and belief in it, because I just said “It’s over.” And did we want to continue, because Heath was so important? And I was surrounded by too many people who said, “Fuck you. You’ve got to go back to work and fix this baby. Do it for Heath.”

Luckily, the mirror is the key, the thing that saved our ass. He had finished most of the stuff on this side of the mirror. I did this slight alteration that when you go through the mirror your face can change depending on who you’re with and whatever’s going on. And that was basically the change. The problem was, how do you get three actors to take over the part? Because there’s no way one (would work)… I didn’t want that. So the three, we’re all friends and then we had to dance around their schedules… We didn’t have time to rehearse, so we didn’t know if any of it was going to work. So the trick was, in many ways, just marching blindly forward without a lot of confidence that it was going to work. And then when I cut it together and showed it to a couple people in London, and they assumed it had been written that way. And I said, “It’s working.”

William Bibbiani: Was the footage seamless? Were there any pieces of Heath Ledger’s performance that don’t fit into the movie now that you have all these other actors? Like, you shot “some” of the Colin Farrell sequence…?

Terry Gilliam: No, everything is in the movie. Even some bits he didn’t do is in the movie. I won’t explain that, how that works.

And the other thing, when you see it, we didn’t change the words. You’ll find words in there that are just shocking that they seem to be so prescient. And everybody thought that we wrote that as sort of a eulogy to Heath, after he died… There is one line that Chris Plummer didn’t want to say, which is he’s talking about stories, stories of romance and comedy. The tale of an unforeseen death. He didn’t want to say it, and I said, “You’ve got to say it Chris. That was the movie Heath and I were making.”

Anyway, it got done somehow, and now when people look at it they just can’t believe that it wasn’t intended, which is a very strange thing. It actually disturbed me slightly because I’ll never know what the film was going to be like if Heath had lived to do all the parts. He had so much planned, so many ideas floating that were going to surprise everybody. They’ll never see it. (Laughs, a bit sadly.)

On the subject of shooting the visual effects, and in particular Gilliam’s use of storyboards, the director had this to say, including a description of how Johnny Depp came aboard:

Terry Gilliam: This one I actually did my own storyboards, and I haven’t done that since Munchausen, so… I only storyboard the stuff that’s going to be effects. I don’t storyboard rest of it, the live-action stuff. I just shoot it.

…Things that were going to be shot possibly outside with Heath, on the other side of the mirror, we had to do on blue screen because Colin (Farrell) and Jude (Law) and Johnny (Depp), if we had to do anything that required exteriors we were buggered, we couldn’t do it. So we controlled situations on a stage, because we didn’t know when they were going to be able to turn up or not. We were constantly shifting the schedule because, “Who could make it?” And the thing with Johnny, even though he was the very first to say “I’m in, whatever…” I asked him if he would help, and he says “I’m there, whatever you need” (And) this is before I worked out what I was going to do! (Laughs.)

And then it became very difficult because he was in prep for Public Enemies. And then because there is truly a God, and because he’s not really hurting me all the time, he came to me and said, “Public Enemies has been delayed by a week. (Terry Gilliam makes an elaborate Tex Avery-inspired noise in celebration.) Damn it, (hurry up) before Michael Mann catches you!”

When asked about Johnny Depp’s involvement with Gilliam’s latest production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (Depp was set to star in the original, now defunct film):

Terry Gilliam: No. He’s not going to. We’ve talked about it; he’s signed up for so much stuff and I want to be shooting next spring and it’s just not going to work. And I think he felt that we went at it once, and I don’t know if it’s superstition or just I’m a nutcase, and he’s probably correct. (Laughs.) He’s probably absolutely right, but he’s smarter than I am. (Laughs again.)

William Bibbiani: Who do you want for the role now?

Terry Gilliam: Uh… I can’t tell you who it is. I don’t have people yet, but we’re starting that process.

William Bibbiani: Well, let me ask you this, because a lot of us have seen the documentary (Lost in La Mancha, Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s 2002 documentary about the collapse of Gilliam’s first attempt to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote) and we’re all big fans, will some of the things that we saw in the documentary, are they still things that you want to be part of the movie?

Terry Gilliam: Nothing you saw will be in the movie. We’ve rewritten it quite a bit.

William Bibbiani: Okay. Even the visual themes? We saw the thing with the puppet men, anything like that?

Terry Gilliam: We just cut that out… I might sneak one back in. These are budgetary things. I might slide one back in.

William Bibbiani: As an homage to the documentary.

Terry Gilliam: (Laughs*) – Yes, exactly! That’s very nicely put.

Someone Else: And then you can do a documentary about the homage to the documentary!

Terry Gilliam: It can go on forever! We can put a musical on stage and then they can film the musical.

Another reporter at the roundtable asked if Terry Gilliam had seen The Watchmen:

Terry Gilliam: Yeah… I thought visually it was really impressive. I thought (Zack Snyder) really did it, but I also thought at the same time, “You need a real kick up the ass.” He was too respectful of the book. That was the problem, and the pace of it, just – I mean, that was our problem when I was working on the script. “How do you get all this stuff in there?” You can’t. He got it spot on, the look of it. Great characters, I mean Rorschach was wonderful, lots of good stuff, but (sighs) come on, move this thing!

I’ve got a theory about it too, because in the book you’re looking at shots. The Comedian’s flag-draped coffin going into the grave. I think it’s three panels, I can’t remember. (Illustrates rhythmically with his hands) –Thunk, thunk, thunk.

In the film? Thuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunk. That was the problem.

William Bibbiani: Well, it’s also paced weirdly because it started out like a murder mystery, and then we lose the murder mystery. And when you’re watching it all in one chunk like that, you get bored. “What happened to the murder?” You can lose track of (that plotline) in a book, but not in a film…

Terry Gilliam: Well that was what I was saying, long before they started doing it, was I thought it should be a five-part TV series. Because then you can, ahhhhhhh… (Terry Gilliam breathes deeply).

William Bibbiani: You’d have the freedom to forget about stuff.

Terry Gilliam: Yeah, exactly. And it would work. That’s why I was glad that Joel Silver and I couldn’t raise the money because it would be one of those things I’d really be terribly embarrassed about (laughs).

Some Other Guy: You discussed in the panel how you started out on Python reworking classic pieces of art, and using the art of dead people. Do you think that your experience with reworking old pieces of art helped you with rejiggering the story of Parnassus?

Terry Gilliam: No, because I didn’t rejig the story. It was basically a very simple thing: “Will it work if you change the actor on the other side of the mirror?” So everything was basically the same, and literally the only thing I changed was – and you see it in the clip there, with the drunk – after she smacks him, he falls down and comes up (and) his face has changed. That was the one change I made. So now we’ve established a face can change…

Our problem was dealing with scenes on this side of the mirror that Heath hadn’t finished. I had to pull those around. I pulled one and stuck it up the other side of the mirror. Jude does this scene with (Andrew Garfield)… I had these scenes that I thought I could pull off on (Heath Ledger’s) side of the mirror with maybe a double in there, but it just was clear that I was not going to get away with this. It’s just not going to work. So I threw that scene on the other side, and it actually works out better… And another scene we just cut out.

I kept saying Heath is sort of editing and directing this film posthumously, because he’s created situations that I can’t get out of, basically. And that’s why in a sense he gets a co-directing credit on this, because “Heath, you’ve made it what it is.”

I mean, we’ve got a credit on the film where it’s supposed to be “A Film by Terry Gilliam?” I said, “Fuck that. It’s a Film by Heath Ledger and Friends.” That was the actors, all of us sitting around one night in Vancouver and the idea came up. “Heath and Friends made this movie.” Terry Gilliam is one of those friends.

Another reporter asks about Christopher Plummer: “He’s always been a wonderful actor… What did you want him to bring to the film that you haven’t seen before?”

Terry Gilliam: I just wanted him to bring all of his talent to the film, the kind of gravitas – I mean, he’s just an extraordinary actor. His theatrical work has always been amazing, his film work: there was The Sound of Music, let’s not forget The Sound of Music (laughs). He wants to forget about it. We’d be on the set, and I’d start going (hums The Sound of Music, laughs). It’s the one way I could always irritate him.

There’s interesting things, you see. Amanda Plummer, his daughter, she was in Fisher King. So here was a man with a daughter (like Dr. Parnassus, Christopher Plummer’s character). I’ll tell you there was one scene in there where we were rehearsing, and I said “Parnassus enters at this point.” And he says, “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean, Chris, ‘You don’t think so?’ The script says. I wrote this.” He says, “Nah. Parnassus, he’d just be standing around with nothing to do.” And I say, “Okay Chris, where do you think you ought to come in?” He says, “Down there.” And he was absolutely right.

That’s the great thing about a theater actor. They know how to make entrances and exits.

And finally, one last reporter asks Terry Gilliam about making films without a net. Does he ever have a Plan B? If Don Quixote falls through, is he finally planning to make Good Omens?

Terry Gilliam: No. I mean I only know how to do one thing at a time. It’s unfortunate, but I don’t know how to split my attention. I just believe totally in something and go for it… until it clearly isn’t going to happen, and then having spent a year or two I move on. I keep saying, because it’s taken so long to get each one off the ground, that I’ve been saved from making as many bad films as other directors have. There were more possibilities that I could have made some real turkeys.

*That’s right, I made a cast member from Monty Python laugh.